【原】外刊阅读分享1.21

To avoid counting incidental uses of such phrases in stories unrelated to politics, we also identified the mix of subjects present in each piece, using a machine-learning algorithm that identifies clusters of words that tend to appear together. | Finally, we calculated the average partisan leaning of each news source's coverage, weighting each story by the share of its content about domestic politics.

algorithm 算法；计算程序

weighting 使负担；使负重担；折磨；视…为重要

To test whether this method accurately reflected partisanship, we compared our rankings with estimates from AllSides and Media Bias Fact Check, ratings websites that rely on human coders. Overall, it yielded a close match: conservative outlets like Breitbart and Fox News used disproportionately Republican terms, whereas left-leaning ones such as Vox and Buzzfeed published mainly Democratic ones (Because our study focused on American media, we did not include The Economist. Applied to our own coverage, this approach produces scores very close to the centre.)

coders 〔电信〕编码器；编码员；编码装置；罐头代号打印机

disproportionately 比例过大地；不成比例地；不成比例的

However, our method has two advantages. Not only is it free of subjectivity, it also measures ideology in absolute terms, providing answers to questions that mere rankings cannot resolve. Are conservatives right to see the media as a whole, rather than just specific outlets, as hostile terrain? Our results suggest so. Of the 20
most-read news websites with available data, 17 use Democratic-linked terms more than Republican-linked ones. The same is true of America's six leading news sources on TV, of which Fox is the only one where conservative language predominates.

subjectivity 主观性；主观主义

it is free of subjectivity.=objective

hostile 敌意的；敌对的；坚决否定；强烈反对

terrain地形；地带；地势

This Democratic slant has grown over time, driven mainly by changes in once-centrist outlets. In 2017 CNN used more Republican terms than Democratic ones, while MSNBC and the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC had only modestly left-leaning scores of around 1.5 phrases per 10,000. By 2022, the broadcast channels and CNN had Democratic leanings of near 2.5, and MSNBC had reached 5.5, putting it twice as far from the centre as Fox.

slant 倾斜；斜面；歪斜；斜线

once-centrist 曾经的中间派

terms 措辞

In written journalism the shift has been smaller but in the same direction. In 2017 the New York Times, Washington Post and
CNN's website all had mild Democratic leanings: around 1.5. This put them a bit closer to conservative sources like Fox News's website, whose average Republican slant in 2017-22 was two, than to left-wing sites like Vox, whose average Democratic leaning in those years was seven. By 2022 these sites' left-of-centre slants had grown to four, three and three, leaving them much closer to lefty alternatives.

mild 温和的；和善的；不严厉的；

leanings 倾斜；倾向

lefty 左派的人；左倾的人

In theory, this trend could result from changes 【either in subject matter-moving （from Republicans' favourite topics, like border security, to those Democrats prefer, such as health care） — or in the language used about each topic. 】The data make clear that most of the shift stems not from what is being talked about, but how.

In three“mainstream” websites-the New York Times, Washington Post and
CNN—coverage moved left from 2017-18 to 2021-22 on 25 of 29 domestic political topics. Articles about race and school shootings were already among the most left-leaning in 2017-2018, but have also seen the
largest leftward shifts since then. By contrast, pieces on health care and immigration, which used lots of Democratic terms in 2017-18 thanks to Mr Trump's unpopular policies, have inched to the right.

school shootings 校园枪击案

left-leaning 左倾的

leftward向左的；向左侧的

By contrast 相比之下;与之相比;相比之下;与之相比;相比较而言;对比起来

inched （使朝某方向）谨慎移动

Our analysis has important limits. First, our dataset, compiled from academic sources, contains only a fraction of the media's full output. It had little content from prominent sources like the Wall Street Journal, and none from radio or social media.

dataset资料集；数据源；数据集对象

Second, our scoring method cannot distinguish between media bias and asymmetric polarisation. Is journalism more left-wing, or have Republicans just sailed further from reality than Democrats? Either could raise the share of Democratic language in media—and in the case of stories describing Mr Trump's false claims of electoral fraud as "the biglie", for example, both have probably played a part. Yet journalists can still say that one party's views are closer to the truth than the other's without relying on partisan language.

asymmetric不对称的；不对等的

polarisation偏振化；极化发展；两极分化理论

in the case of 假使;假使，如果发生